This Website belongs to this Andrew Carson:

 • From Belfast, Northern Ireland.
 • BSc in Computer Science at Queen's 1986-91.
 • Worked for Ford Motor Company in London (Brentwood) for 3 years.
 • Worked for WPDS/Spirent Systems in San Diego.
 • Co-founded Raptor ASA Corp in 2001.
 • Raptor acquired by MRO in 2004, MRO acquired by IBM in 2006.
 • Left IBM in 2007, joined Wombat, acquired by NYSE Euronext in 2008.
 • Founded X-15 Data Systems in 2009.

ANDREW CARSON ON LINKEDIN | FACEBOOK

Thoughts On Java

Having been a programmer for more than 25 years (I started at the age of 12), and having worked with dozens of different programming languages, it's clear to me that no language is perfect. Ada is gorgeous but unattainable for most. C++ is like a stunning brunette that's quarrelsome and a bit ditzy. Lisp is lovely but it will all end in divorce. C# is the supermodel that's had work done.
Java is the "girl next door", a blonde sweetie in a never-ending cat-walk of other languages. This website is intended (mostly) for Java aficionados.

Thoughts On Programming

In the good old days of programming (late 70's, early 80's) we would painstakingly type in listings from poorly-written but much-loved books ("101 BASIC Computer Games", and so on) and magazines ("Creative Computing" and "Practical Computing" etc) for fun. In those days we would have to read the programs and try to understand how they worked and how we might convert them to whatever appalling adaptation of BASIC we had at the time. And so, for reasons of nostalgia, instead of providing downloadable files, all code on this site is provided in the form of short listings that you can read, and cut & paste into your IDE.